Every department in Kent County Council will have to make budget cuts, it has been warned.

The authority is preparing to make savings after inflation sent its budget into a £70 million projected overspend.

In February, KCC struggled to produce a balanced budget for the current financial year.

Since then inflation has rocketed and so has demand for its services.

Last week, council leader Cllr Roger Gough told colleagues at County Hall: “After just three months into the year, our projected overspend was £50 million. After five months, it is now £70m.

"The trouble is that we are extremely sensitive to inflation on our expenditure side, but not on our income side.

“We’ve never been looking at a projected set of pressures on this scale. No-one should doubt the gravity of the situation.

'There is not a single department within KCC that is not facing some form of cut going forward...'

“It is an issue that is going to shape a lot of the conversations we will be having in this chamber over the coming weeks and months.”

Cllr Gough said that £45m of the overspend was the estimated impact of inflation.

“Demographic change” and “challenges delivering existing savings” made up the rest.

Cllr Gough said KCC would “go on pushing the government extremely hard” for additional financial support, but it could not rely on that. Therefore, there would be some “difficult decisions” ahead.

Cllr Peter Oakford (Con), the deputy leader and cabinet member for finance, said the projected overspend was one of the reasons why it had been so pointless for opposition councillors to attempt to reverse a £2.2m cut in the authority’s subsidies for bus services this year.

He said: “That will be just one of hundreds of cuts we will have to make.

“There is not a single department within KCC that is not facing some form of cut going forward.”